The Barber of Seville

Rossini's Barber of Seville has always been an opera that I have struggled with every time I've seen it. It has 3 great pieces of music in it (the Overture, Largo al Factotum and Una Voce Poco Fa) and a whole lot of fairly uninspiring music plus a plot that doesn't make sense (the end of Act 1 has everyone standing around being confused for no apparent reason allowing the main characters to get away with all sorts of things).

In Munich on Monday night, I attended a performance of Barber of Seville that didn't necessarily change my mind, but certainly made me laugh a lot (it is a comic opera, so that means it was succesful!) and made the Act 1 Finale make sense (a seemingly impossible task!). Even though the singing was only OK and some of the ensembles were extraodinarily messy, I still had a really enjoyable night in the theatre. "How???" you might ask....

Answer: Reinterpret Act 1 of the opera and set it with all the major characters and chorus as insects playing around a giant flower - kinda like A Bug's Life. Yes, insects... in Rossini...

The only reason the end of Act 1 made sense was because a giant can of bug spray descended from the ceiling and sprayed everyone on stage making them suitably confused.

Act 2 restored them all to human form (metamorphosed if you like) and the set was a police line up... Anytime a character was onstage but not directly involved in the drama, they were pressed up against the wall like they were in the line up. It looked a lot like the poster for The Usual Suspects.

After the puzzling thunderstorm music (again making no sense whatsoever) the curtain went up on a combination of the 2 sets (flower and line-up) and the characters wearing most of their human costume, but with their wings (or spider legs, or snail shell).

This really didn't make much sense to me, but I'm sure it was entirely justified in the extensive program notes quoting Nietzsche and the like... but all in German...

While it may seem extremely odd, it really worked and I totally enjoyed my night - despite the actual music and performances (which could have made me as grumpy as last week's Mozart concert.) And it was so nice to go to an opera for the first time in ages!